A Chance Meeting

He walked into a coffee shop in his new neighborhood feeling virtuous because he had just completed a strenuous workout at the gym he just joined. “Not bad for an old man,” he thought while he waited in line for his coffee. He caught his reflection in a mirror behind the counter. He still had a full head of brown hair. Not one strand gray. He reminded himself he needed a shave, though. 

Stan had relocated to Franklin, Tennessee six months ago to be close to his daughter. Divorced for a couple of years now, he mostly kept to himself after his wife, Nora walked out and returned to New Mexico, where she was raised.

After living alone for 18 months, living in New Jersey had lost its appeal. The cost of living was high and the winters, while not what they once were, got on his nerves. Scraping snow off his windshield in windy and icy cold weather brought out the F-bombs in him as soon as he started swinging his arms. 

Franklin, Tennessee with its agreeable people, agreeable weather and lower cost of living, delighted him. He ordered a coffee and an egg, bacon and cheese biscuit for breakfast and found a table in the back corner. He pulled his phone out and checked the stock market. Next was the New York Times. He managed to get through an article about the rising cost of rents in Manhattan, when the server brought him his sandwich. 

As he was taking his first bite he noticed a woman sitting alone near the front door, gripping her coffee cup with both hands to warm them. Immediately, he thought of Carolyn, a woman he had dated when they were both undergrad students at Penn State. He took another bite and looked in the woman’s direction again. She was looking at him. He hesitated. Taking a closer look now he tried to imagine how Carolyn might have aged. The woman was wearing jeans and Uggs low cut boots. Her white sweater had a Scotch pine tree running down the center, perfect for a December morning. 

Not wanting to stare, he went back to his biscuit sandwich. He took a sip of coffee and suddenly felt her approaching. “I’m sorry to bother you,” she said. “But you look so familiar, like someone I went to school with.”

He smiled. “Carolyn!”

“You recognized me? Why didn’t you come over and say hello?”

“I wasn’t sure it was you. What are the chances of running into each other in Franklin, Tennessee?” He stood and pulled back a chair for her. “As soon as I heard your voice, I knew it was you.”

“Let me get my coffee. I’ll be right back,” she said. 

As she walked back from her table he couldn’t help but notice she had maintained her figure.

“Do you live in Franklin?” Stan asked.

They spent twenty minutes catching up. Carolyn, recently widowed, still lived in New Jersey, the same town she grew up in. She became a nurse, in her early 50s. She was retired and doing volunteer work at a local hospice.

Stan told her he’d sold golf equipment for MacGregor for 42 years. He’d also competed in amateur golf tournaments for years, with little success. “When my girls entered their teen years,” he said, “my wife insisted I play less golf and spend more time with the girls.”

“Was that hard on you?” Carolyn asked a smile in her voice. 

“At first, maybe. But I quit one day on the fifth green waiting for my turn to putt. I knocked a twenty-footer into the hole and walked off.” He laughed remembering the moment. “I never played again. But I got to know my daughters a lot better.”

He finished his sandwich. “Are you thinking about moving here?” He asked. 

“My youngest lives here. She wants me to move, but I’m not ready. My other five all live in New Jersey.”

He leaned back and laughed hard.

“I said something funny?’ She opened another creamer and added it to her coffee. “On a lark, I tried stand up for a while in my thirties, but I never got any laughs, not like that anyway.”

“Sorry but for some reason, my first thought was, “Six kids! Maybe it was good that it didn’t work out for us.”

She nodded. “It would have obliterated your dreams of being a golf pro, I’m sure.”

“I didn’t mean it like that, Carolyn. The idea of having six kids just struck me funny.” He hesitated. “Don’t get me wrong. I had a good marriage. But for me, you were always the one that got away.” He noticed the woman at the next table giving him an appraising look.

“My Joe was a good man. He worked so hard his whole life to take care of us. We were good Catholics, I guess.”

“What did Joe do?” Stan asked. 

“He was a cardiologist.”

They sat quietly for a moment, neither of them sure of what to say.

Then, Stan took a deep breath and gathered his courage. “I’m glad I ran into you. Would you like to continue our conversation over dinner?”

“I would like that, Stan, but I have a flight to Newark at two.”

He nodded. “Do you need a ride to the airport?”

She smiled. “My grandson is taking me. I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but over the years, thanks to the Internet, I kept tabs on you now and then.”

“I guess you know I never won a tournament.”

“Maybe you should have tried stand up,” she said. She pulled a pen from her purse and wrote her phone number on a napkin. “Text me and then I’ll have yours.”

He watched her walk out of the coffee shop, fingering the napkin with her number on it. He picked up his phone and texted her. “Text me when you land so I’ll know you arrived safely.”

She did.